Quote:
Originally Posted by Retroit
I guess Civil War re-enactments are out too?
|
I was heavily into reenacting for 10 years. The last reenactment I attended the venue told us that we could not fly our flags even in camp and the Confederate brigade could not march in the town Labor Day parade. We were also told we could not go into town post event in Confederate uniform. It was quite possibly the worst time I ever had doing any thing but certainly my very worst experience ever.
This was during the peak of the flap over the Battle Flag. We wound up pretty angry and the rebels rebelled. And the Yankees were with us. We ran up a big headquarters flag at the officers tent, the infantry marched out through town to the battlefield with flag bearers holding the Battle Flag and a First National and we cavalry flew a swallow tail Battle Flag guidon.
As if Confederate troops went into battle without their colors.
We weren't making a damn racial statement. We were portraying history in an accurate way. Not a word was said. After the event we went into town in uniform and gathered at a bar owned by one of our cavalry members and had a good ol' time. The bar owner is a former Marine Corp Sergeant Major. Nobody was going to tell him he couldn't allow grey uniforms in his bar.
Any one who knows anything about military life knows about Sergeant Majors. LOL. Even retired ones. Alas though that was the last event my son and I attended. we dedicated ourselves to competitive handgun. Action Steel MoM bowling pins (pins are evil...they must die) and ICORE. I'm truly dismayed at how history is being treated. Reenactors of all sorts are no longer seen as living historians playing a role. And this targeting of us I see as an insidious rewriting and erasing of true history.
This business with the sailing vessel event is just flat pathetic. I wonder how it is history is supposed to be portrayed now? It seems every aspect of history offends someone these days. Ae we supposed to pretend that the vessels used by Columbus never existed? That thee was no Confederate army in the War between the States? That there was no Westward expansion? And an interesting historical fact comes to my mind now.
groups like BLM are the ones screaming the loudest about historical facts being portrayed by monuments and now of course by living historians. There was a few guys who rode with us in our cavalry unit. They drilled with us but didn't do Civil War portrayal. They were 10th US cavalry. Both the 10th and 11th cav were highly decorated recognized for their valor in battle. In the Indian Wars of the 1870s and up though the Spanish American War. They were Black units.
So, where does such an historical portrayal fit in on the "offensive" meter? Those units heavily engaged the Apache, Kiowa, Comanche, Cheyenne, Lakota and more. They killed a large number of American Indians. They were quite good at what they did. So do Black people today now owe a debt to American Indians? Do they need to acknowledge their role in Manifest Destiny and the conquering of the Tribes and the subsequent herding of them onto reservations? Is a portrayal of those troopers offensive?
At any rate all irony aside history is what it is. If an historical portrayal has people fleeing to a "safe space" how should history be portrayed? As anything but what it really was I guess. Cliche' though it is that saying that says "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." I fea our nation is doomed.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
